Bitter Irony
by orangerachel
Summary: But it had to be then, didn't it? It had to be when I least expected it. It had to be one of the few people on this Earth who I never wanted to hurt. Rated for suicide and character death. Oneshot. Kennycentric.


**A/N: Hey everyone!**

**Uh, well this is nothing like what's been posted on this account before. This was actually written by only one of us (Maggie) when she got a plot into her head that wouldn't leave. It's...angsty. And sad. And just... Really, really different than usual from us. Just a warning.**

**Uh, I feel like this should go without saying, but just in case-No, I don't have suicidal thoughts. I don't support or advise suicide. I researched it for this, which is why (I hope) the details are correct. Please don't take anything in this story as something you should do. Ever.  
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**But anyway, I'm actually really pleased with this. I meant for it only to be drabble-length, but you can see how that turned out. I wrote it over two nights, and it really was a blast. It kind of reminds me of the style I wrote in before I started to collaborate with Rachel. Also, I'd like to mention that Kenny is my favorite character to write, both humorously and dramatically. I always have fun with him, even if I'm just straight-up torturing the kid.**

**Hope you enjoy!**

**Warnings: Angst, suicide (which is Kenny), character death (which...isn't), slight pre-Kyman. This one's kind of triggery, people.  
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**Disclaimer: I don't own South Park.**

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><p>Five-hundred fifty three.<p>

Five-hundred fifty three deaths. That night was supposed to have been the five-hundred fifty fourth. There shouldn't have been any problems. A bullet to the brain. One of the simplest, while not the cleanest, way to off yourself. As far as suicides go, one of the most common methods. Some may even call it cliché. Considering some of the other fucked-up ways I've gone, I can't believe this was what ultimately got me somewhere I couldn't get back from.

I could not tell you the causes of each of the five-hundred fifty three deaths I had experienced up until that fateful night. Only a handful were diseases, and most of those that were had been sexually transmitted (for what it's worth, before I ended up here, I was quite desirable. All the girls wanted to get into my pants, and the feeling was mutual.). Some were drug overdoses. Many of them were accidents, and that was the only category riddled throughout my life, at the age of fifteen, and the first death I ever remember was a bus crash when I was two. I was in a stroller, and my mom, with the infinite wisdom of a drug abuser, chose to leave me in the middle of the road as she tracked down her dealer behind Tom's Rhinoplasty. Needless to say, I was scared shitless when I woke up the next day in my bed, my dad yelling at my mother for beer as if their youngest son had _not _been mutilated by a bus just the day before.

The great majority of them, however, were suicides.

It hadn't started that way, of course. When I was young, I wished to keep the dying to the bare minimum, for obvious reasons. But as I got older, I came to terms that multiple deaths to me was like going through puberty- it was an inevitable part of life, and there was no way to change it. The difference between my chronic deaths and puberty, however, was that my deaths could be manipulated. Changed, if not in my favor, on my terms. The accidents, diseases, and overdoses would still occur, of that I was certain, but I could at least have bits of control in an otherwise uncontrollable situation.

I realized this at seven. I suppose I wasn't a stupid kid. Well, at least where it ultimately didn't matter.

While the realization hit close to my seventh birthday, I didn't act upon it until I was almost eight. When I finally committed the act (a spur of the moment drowning in the bathtub. It, I found out later, is one of the cleanest ways to go. But, at the time, I wasn't looking for sanitation. I was looking for _escape_ and _control_.), I felt… empowered. Invigorated. It was the first time I hadn't been a slave to my own demise, and I loved it.

I tried to restrain myself after that first time, though. I got it into my head that suicide might be my ultimate downfall. What if I could only come back from suicides so many times, and it was natural causes that I would always come back from? As much as I hated my constant dying, I was… as content as one with my condition could be. I didn't want to lose my ability to come back, and by my own doing.

That only lasted about a month. As much as I liked my life on earth, I didn't want to be in this constant limbo. I was at the point where I knew there may be a possibility I wouldn't come back. That thing was, I just didn't care. So I did it again, and again, and again. And every time, it felt better, like I was gaining something that I had never had before.

I decided that, as much as I wanted for people to realize that I was constantly dying while in their presence, it would be scarring if they saw me kill myself, and then saw me walking around the very next day (I also realized that it was foolish to even hope that someone would notice my constant deaths was possible. But I held out that maybe this was the way… I thought it would be ironic if it was, the one way I couldn't allow them to learn it. But then, what in my life isn't filled with bitter irony?). I would only perform suicides when I knew the house was deserted, and no one could stop by for a surprise visit. After midnight was my favorite time. In my screwed up head, I thought it was almost poetic.

Again, even this lasted only a short while. More than a month, but it had to have been less than three. I was selfish. After I got the idea that maybe, _maybe_, no matter how awful it would be for the person on the receiving end, this was the way for someone to learn, someone to _know_. Someone that I could come to for help, so it didn't feel like I was holding the weight of the world on my shoulders, day in and day out.

So I took my father's shotgun (oh, how I've come to loathe that shotgun over the years in this place), and went to someone to see if it would work. There was reasons I chose the person I chose- it had to be someone I didn't like, so I wouldn't feel overwhelmingly guilty if it did indeed work, but someone I didn't mind, so I wouldn't resent them for knowing. It had to be someone who I felt wouldn't react by immediately calling the police. And, most importantly, it had to be someone who wouldn't tell my friends of my problem, and who ultimately wouldn't care.

Really, there was only one person who I felt fit all of the criteria.

Craig had been sitting in his living room with his family before he had come to answer the door. I knew this both because I saw him through the window before I knocked and because he told me after he asked me 'what the hell I wanted' and told me to 'hurry the fuck up.' I looked at him, and smirked. Why keep him waiting?

The bullet making contact with my skull was, for the first time, secondary, due to the expression on his usually stoic-looking face. I had seen people watch me die before, sure, but I had never been able to look into their eyes, see their reaction as it was happening.

When I came back the next morning, my first destination was Craig's. He looked at me like I was the last thing he expected to see on his doorstep, but not in the holy-shit-I-just-witnessed-you-commit-suicide way in which I was desperately hoping. It was more like the look he had given me last night, before yelling at me- curious as to why I was there, more than anything. My group and his rarely mingled, so it was understandable. It still hurt, though.

The one upside to this was, of course, I could now commit suicide outside of my bedroom without risk of someone realizing that I would come back. I didn't do this often, though, until I was twelve or thirteen. Then, I did it constantly. I would go out and jump off of buildings, or feed myself to rabid animals, or jump in front of a bus. I must have killed myself in front of everyone in South Park at least once, just to see if someone, _anyone_, would realize. Of course, there was no such luck.

No harm came of anyone involved in my suicides, up until that night. However, it wasn't for lack of trying. I would occasionally put up suicides that could have hit anyone at random, that looked like an accident. But, no, it was _always_ me. It was like God was the best marksman in the world, and I was his target.

But it had to be then, didn't it? It had to be when I least expected it. It had to be when I was performing one of the easiest ways to kill yourself, out of the hundreds that I had tried and succeeded in. And it had to be one of the few people on this Earth who I never wanted to hurt.

Kyle was one of my best friends, and had been ever since I could remember. Despite his faults, he was by far the kindest and most optimistic person in my group, and he was always willing to lend a hand to people who needed one. It was his care for his friends, though, that became his ultimate downfall.

The accident occurred right after I put the barrel of the gun to my temple, before I got a chance to pull the trigger and end my life once again. What I didn't know was that Kyle had been standing outside my window, about to knock on it to be let in and talk to me about my recent (or not-so-recent, if you count the last eight-plus years as _recent_.) depression. He was, at first, shocked at the 'great lengths' I would go to get away from my 'problems.' So shocked, in fact, that he was rooted to the ground outside my window. But as I was about to pull the trigger, that changed. He jumped through my window, breaking the glass, in order to get to me before the gun went off. And it worked. He was able to get the gun in time for it not to hit me.

The problem was, he twisted it away from me in such a way that it hit him, right in the head. I know from experience that he was dead before he hit the floor.

I stood there for a moment, staring at my friend, feeling my eyes begin to water. I didn't know what to do. The idea of hiding his body flitted through my mind, but I thought that Kyle just didn't deserve something like that- being buried in an unmarked, shallow grave by someone who he always considered a friend. No, I thought, I couldn't let that happen. I'd stick with Kyle, tell the truth, that it was an accident, until the end. No matter what would ultimately happen to me.

I came to regret making that promise soon after. Not because of Kyle, but because no one would believe me, and what _ultimately happened to me _was worse than I had expected, to say the least.

Stan and Cartman had run in after they heard the gun go off. I had forgotten that we were all supposed to stay over at Stan's tonight, plans that I had cancelled at the last moment. That, at least, explained why Kyle came when he did- he must have wanted to check up on me, and the other two just came along. I didn't want to hide this from them, but I had a pretty good idea of what their reactions would (rightfully) be, but I didn't want to be on the receiving end.

Both were shocked, and then all Hell broke loose. Stan cried, blamed me, yelled a lot, and swore revenge. Cartman…just stood there, with a disbelieving look on his face, like he simply couldn't comprehend what was going on. Then, he looked at me with a look that showed both hurt and vengeance. At the time, I didn't understand his reaction, but as I had more time to think, I realized-Cartman… needed Kyle. It was certainly not a healthy relationship, but his constant ripping on Kyle made him feel…something that he may not have if it had happened a few years prior. It wasn't a crush, but it could have been one of the closest emotions to that that Cartman was capable of.

I had tried to explain to them, between Stan's damnations, that it was a tragic mistake, but they didn't even try to believe me. I felt betrayed that they wouldn't even listen to my side of the story, but in their defense, it couldn't have possibly looked much worse- I was literally holding the smoking gun. I just hoped they would calm down before he did anything too rash.

Their first stop was the police department. They didn't believe it was an accident, either.

As I was being hauled into the back of the police car by the suddenly-competent police officers, for what I realized would probably be a _very long time_, I thought about killing myself. I realized that, if I did that, it would give me time. Time to either escape, or get Kyle's body somewhere away from my house for long enough to be able to explain myself- have him 'go missing' and 'turn up' a few days later. It wouldn't be difficult, I could jump in front of the next car and go to Hell for the next day or so, then clean up my room, and Kyle's body would be discovered near Stark's Pond. Everyone here would have a big black space of where these memories were. Or, at the most, very, very distant memories, like an old dream. But, again, my respect for Kyle and promise to him forced me to go against this train of thought.

So that's why I'm where I am today. Name-Kenny McCormick. Age-21. Location-Colorado State Penitentiary. This is the five-year anniversary of the night I accidentally killed one of my best friends.

The only one I've spoken to since that night, of my old group of friends, was Kyle. It was the next death after that night, right after I was put away-one too many zaps from a taser-and I needed to talk to him. He was in Hell, this I knew, and... I had to apologize. For everything that had happened to him that night. I had ended up breaking down in front of him, the first and last time in recent memory where I cried. He was pissed at first, but he eventually forgave me, realizing that it was, in fact, an accident as soon as it happened. He claimed that Hell wasn't so bad, and he was actually more afraid of where I had ended up. Then he smiled and said:

"But that's all over now, isn't it? You're dead now, too. And it wasn't even from suicide."

I sighed and told him that he'd probably be able to see me around here a fair amount, but I was due back on Earth in a few hours. At his confused face, I explained my entire existence, from what had happened to me when I was two up until present-day. He looked horrified, then depressed. He had asked me if that's where I had gone during those days when I had simply disappeared, and when I confirmed, he gave me a hug and apologized for how he, Cartman, and Stan had treated me. We still talk to each other and hang out every time I die.

And the amount of times I die is ever-increasing, even today. My cellmate, a Frenchmen put away for some unsavory mercenary work and committing matricide after one-too-many strains on his temper (but otherwise a surprisingly good guy, aside from his anger management issues. He's by far the closest thing outside of Hell I have to a friend.), is actually aware of my deaths- one of the upsides, I suppose, of being in a maximum security prison is that the people you spend twenty hours a day with tends to notice when you disappear for a few days, coming back with no repercussions. When he asked after the first time, grabbing my collar and asking if I knew a way out of this 'sheet hole,' I explained. He looked almost like he didn't believe me, until he figured nothing else made sense. He's an odd guy, but sometimes, that's almost a good thing.

So this is my punishment for the biggest mistake of my life. We sit, try to come up with a way to escape, although I think we both understand that that will never happen, at least for me- I feel like I have to live out my sentence, to repent. We talk about our lives before our arrests, and what our goals were for our lives (mine were significantly more innocent- I just wanted to work at the local gas station, while he wanted to be the top assassin in the world.) that we would never achieve.

Sometimes, when I was bored, or he was angry, I'd kill myself, or let him kill me. It was stress relief. It was entertainment. It may have been the only way either of us had ended up staying sane.

The concept of death to most my age is, for the most part, foreign. They know it will come eventually, but do not expect it to come for many years. For me, it is the opposite-it comes so often that I don't remember a time where it didn't surround me. And not even a lifetime in prison, no matter how long or short, could possibly change that.

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><p><strong>AN: Hmm, I wonder who the cellmate was. *wink wink***

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**Hope you enjoyed!**


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